Category Archives: 2018 package bombs

From New York City Patch: Two Brooklyn politicians want cops to examine New Yorkers’ online activity to prevent more hate-fueled tragedies like the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. State Sen. Kevin Parker and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams proposed legislation Friday that would incorporate social media accounts into background checks for gun buyers.

They argue doing so would help law enforcement authorities spot dangerous people like Robert Bowers, who reportedly declared his hatred for Jewish people online before allegedly killing 11 people last Saturday.

“You would have thought this person was a model citizen until you examined his social media profile,” said Adams, a Democrat. “And you would have noticed he was not a model citizen, he was a broken citizen that was a time bomb that was waiting to explode.”

The pair of bills would empower the New York State Police and local departments like the NYPD to checkthree years of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat activity for anyone applying for a gun license in New York, Parker said.

Authorities would flag anything that is an “immediate threat to public safety,” he said. Gun buyers would also have to let police comb through a year’s worth of their search engine histories under the legislation.

The state’s SAFE Act — known as one of the nation’s toughest gun laws — requires instant federal background checks for all gun sales except those between immediate family members. But lawmakers have to do more in the wake of recent hate crimes such as the Pittsburgh shooting, Parker said.

“We certainly want to make sure that we’re adding to the protections that we need to make sure that people that we’re putting handguns and rifles and shotguns in the possession, that they in fact are the people that are using them in the right way,” Parker said.

The syngagogue massacre, in which 11 people died, came just a day after federal authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc, the Florida man accused of mailing bombs to high-profile Democratic figures. Sayoc had searched for his targets’ addresses online, federal prosecutors allege.

Lawmakers are still working out exactly how law-enforcement officials would go about accessing social media profiles that are not publicly viewable, Parker said, though he noted the legislation would require gun buyers to make their profiles available.

“We’re going look at what’s in the universe already and use that as one of the tools to determine the profile of a person who’s attempting to purchase a handgun,” Adams said.

Lowy had represented accused package bomber Cesar Altieri Sayoc, 56, in the past (Sayoc had been arrested nine times, not including his arrest yesterday for sending package bombs to a plethora of prominent Democrats), and currently represents Sayoc’s family — his mother and sister.

Yesterday, in an exclusve CNN interview, Lowy described Sayoc as mentally ill — a “sick individual” who is lost and needs help, who “didn’t react like a normal individual” and “wasn’t working on all cylinders”.

Although Sayoc in a tweet had claimed to be a Seminole, Lowy said (0:30 mark):

“Well, he was clearly not Native-American. His father was Filipino and abandoned him as a child and his mother is Italian. And he adopted this claim to being a Seminole because he was trying to create an identity. If you ask me, again my layman’s opinion, is that manifested from his lack of a father and his desire for an identity. This was someone lost…. And he found a father in Trump.”

A Seminole tribe spokesman says Sayoc has no affiliation with the tribe. (Blue Lives Matter)

Despite Anderson Cooper’s efforts to cut him off, Lowy persisted and said this at the end of the interview (3:12 mark):

“He [Sayoc] never seems sophisticated enough to do something like he’s accused of. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there were either others who helped prod or encouraged him to do this, or that the bombs in fact were so crudely made, they never could have worked, because he didn’t seem to have the intellectual capacity to plan a conspiracy like this in my opinion.”

A longtime friend of Cesar Sayoc is a former CIA officer.

In a social media post in 2016, Sayoc wrote: “I would like to wish my great friend from Academy 9 yrs military school Ricki a happy birthday and lifetime from CIA. Congrats on your invention and many successes my brother.”

Sayoc’s social media accounts have now been expunged from the net. But early yesterday morning, an enterprising netizen managed to take a screenshot of Sayoc’s 2016 post:

According to Forbidden Knowledge TV, Sayoc’s CIA friend Ricki is former CIA agent Enrique “Ric” Prado. This is Prado’s self-description on his website:

Enrique “Ric” Prado is a twenty five year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency where he served in six overseas posts, including as Chief of Station in a Muslim country. Domestically, he served as Chief of Operations for the DCI’s Counterterrorist Center under Ambassador Cofer Black during the 11 September, 2001 attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism. He also served as the Deputy on the original bin Laden Task Force. Highly decorated, he received the CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal (highest award given to Senior Officers), as well as CTC’s George Bush H. W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism, among others. He is a native Spanish speaker and a graduate of George Mason University.

As C/OPS at CTC, then a Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) officer, Mr. Prado oversaw CIA’s counterterrorist efforts post 9/11 and coordinated SPECOPS activities with the NSC and FBI, as well as elite U.S. Military representatives from DELTA, and SEAL-Team Six then detailed to the CIA. Mr. Prado was also Deputy Chief East Asia Division, running CIA’s Korean Operations and previously, as Chief of CIA Liaison in Seoul, Korea. He spend his first ten years in CIA as a Paramilitary Officer serving in dangerous areas, to include 18-months in the jungles of Central America as the first CIA officer living in the anti-Sandinista “Contra” camps, and running CT operations in Peru and the Philippines. He is a former member of the elite USAF Pararescue. Upon retirement he worked as a Special Advisor to MITRE Corporation and subsequently as Vice President for Special Government Programs at Blackwater U.S.A.

Throughout his Agency career and post-retirement work in support of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Mr. Prado has developed a substantial network of intelligence operation officers, investigators, military and police officer contacts worldwide. He now brings these resources to the private sector.

In his 50-page e-book How to Get Away With Murder in America, author Evan Wright tells the story of Enrique Prado, a high-ranking CIA-officer-turned-Blackwater-employee who oversaw assassination units for both the CIA and the contractor. A federal organized crime squad run out of the Miami-Dade Police Department tied Prado to seven murders carried out while he worked as a bodyguard for a narco crime boss. At the time, the CIA declared him unavailable for questioning; the investigation was shut down before he was arrested or tried. (The Atlantic)

Prado is said to have moved a secret death squad from the CIA to Blackwater. (Wired)

According to Wright, Prado was involved with the Mafia throughout his CIA career, which ended with him as head of the agency’s secret assassination squad against Al Qaeda. Wright wrote: “In protecting Prado, the CIA arguably allowed a new type of mole — an agent not of a foreign government but of American criminal interests — to penetrate command.” (Daily Mail)